To serve and protect

Three years ago, Rob Young was working for the Stockton Unified School District as a campus police officer. Based at Edison High School, he heard a call over the emergency radio that shots had been fired at King Elementary.

Three years ago, Rob Young was working for the Stockton Unified School District as a campus police officer. Based at Edison High School, he heard a call over the emergency radio that shots had been fired at King Elementary.

Young ran to his patrol car, turned on the lights and siren, and raced the three miles to King.

"I was thinking, 'This is another Cleveland School shooting,'" Young said. "I was thinking the worst. You didn't have time to be scared. You had to go. That's what I was sworn in to do. I remember thinking on the freeway, 'This is my time to give back.'"

It turned out no one was injured, the shooting was not school-related, and there were no arrests.

But the incident reinforced for Young why he always had wanted to be a police officer.

Remarkably, that dream became stronger still the day 20 years ago that Young took one of the 105 rounds from drifter Patrick Purdy's assault weapon.

On Jan. 17, 1989, Young was a 6-year-old first-grader on the Cleveland playground when Purdy shot him in his right foot. Young also suffered a shrapnel wound in his chest.

"I remember how safe I felt when the police officers were there," Young said. "I've always looked up to cops."

Young, now 26, said he would still be with Stockton Unified's police force if money weren't a factor. But he got married, and he and his wife had two children.

Young doubled his pay when he took his current job with the Union City Police Department.

Young still lives in Stockton, commuting to the East Bay community for three 12-hour shifts a week. And Young - who says he is a "devout Christian" - has two approaches to life. At home, he is a soft-spoken, gentle husband and father. At work, he puts on a law enforcement persona that is tough and no-nonsense.

Young is matter-of-fact about the dangers of police work. He has three guns on him at all times when he's at work, one of them an AR-15 assault rifle. He calls them "tools." His loved ones can't help worrying, but they know he's in his dream job.

"It's something he's always wanted to do," said his 56-year-old father, Bob, who still lives in Stockton. "It's almost a calling. I don't think he'd be happy doing anything else. It's not up to me. It's his life."

Young used one of his weapons in March, wounding a transient who had robbed an East Bay liquor store and pulled a gun on him.

It was the first time he had ever discharged his weapon as an officer.

"Wow," Young said he thought that day. "This is the second shooting that I've been actively involved in."

Young said he remembers the first one vividly. He has the ability to recall with precise detail what happened two decades ago on the Cleveland playground.

He was playing kickball with his friends when he heard loud popping noises, and children screaming and panicking. He took off running toward the handball wall. He remembers his feet being swept out from under him and a slap against his chest from the ricochet of a bullet.

He was rushed to Lodi Memorial Hospital. His father was worried about the chest wound. But the doctor said the foot injury was the bad one. His father walked out of the hospital room, trying to get some air and clear his mind. He sat down in the waiting room and looked up at the television to see ABC's "Nightline" airing a photograph of Rob with an oxygen mask covering his face.

"There was no escaping it," Bob Young said.

Doctors told him his son might lose the use of his foot. Amputation was a remote possibility. But Rob Young recovered quickly, and one day he shocked his father by taking one of his crutches, pointing it at friends and wielding it machine-gun style.

"I didn't know if it was a sign of him healing or a sign of aggression," Bob Young said.

Within a few months, Rob Young was playing baseball for the Cubs in the Oak Park Little League.

"I remember sitting in the stands at his first game, and I burst into tears," his father said. "I'm kind of choking it back right now after all these years."

Rob Young would receive counseling for seven years to help him through the aftermath. His parents - who divorced five years ago - also struggled. Bob Young admits he became strict and overprotective. He said he began drinking beer "habitually" after the shooting.

"The term 'self-medication' comes up," he said.

The anniversary of the Cleveland shootings has always been difficult for Rob Young. The emotional scars invariably resurface.

Jan. 17, 1999, fell on a Sunday. Young was 16 at the time. He didn't feel well all day. He didn't realize until the afternoon that it was the 10th anniversary. At 8 p.m., he told his parents he was going to lie down.

"Robbie, are you OK?" his father asked.

"For the first time ever, I broke down and cried," Young said. "I just lost it. I broke down, I shook my head and said, 'No, I'm not.' ... I probably sobbed for 15 minutes. I think it was just everything I held in for all those years. I lost it. I haven't since."

Nowadays, Young focuses on two life-affirming mid-January anniversaries.

Today, he and his wife, Jennifer, will celebrate their fourth wedding anniversary. And along with 3-year-old son Christian, they will celebrate daughter Alissa's second birthday.

But even though Jan. 18 brings better memories, Young considers it his duty always and forever to remember as well the tragedy of Jan. 17.

"Some people want to forget it," he said. "I don't think that it's ever going to help to forget something like that. I think it's going to help to talk about it and remember it. Us, the victims, we lived it.

"There's five kids that lost their lives that day. If you forget it, I'm afraid that you may forget their memory. They deserve more than that. ... We're all victims. I think everybody kind of owes it to us to remember it, because we lived it."